Profile

I didn’t know I wanted to be a scientist when I was younger but I have always loved animals. I was the kid at school who wanted to go and look at the spider that everyone else was running away from! I really like watching nature documentaries too, especially when David Attendbourgh is narrating. So when I found out that watching animals was something I could do as a job I was very excited!

At the moment I am especially interested in the behaviour of the beetles, which means I spend most of my time trying to figure out why they do what they do. Burying beetles are cool because the parents provide care for their children (this is very rare in insects). So, for my PhD I am trying to figure out what affects how the male and the female beetles work together to look after their children. For example, if the female is feeling sick will the male work harder so that she can rest and feel better? Or will she keep working hard even though she doesn’t feel very well? Those are the types of questions I would really like to answer!

As an evolutionary biologist, I have also spent time answering similar questions about lots of other types of animals like nightjars (a bird that has a very odd song), spiders, and giraffes. It’s a very exciting job!

The beetles are quite easy to look after but there are a lot of them (I have 300 at the moment and even more when I am doing an experiment) so it ends up taking a lot of time! Each one needs to be fed a small cube of beef twice a week.

Most of my experiments involve changing something and then watching the beetles to see how they react – these are called behavioural observations (observing the behaviour of the beetles). I do these observations in the dark using a red light because the beetles are nocturnal which means they are most active during the night.